If it's static and it's not moving, if there's muscle activity in that area, what happens when you contract a muscle hard enough to constrict blood flow? And what are the products of that? It's like the whole consequence, right? So you get an increase in acidity, right? Your type III afferents that monitor that area send signals to the brain and the brain says, hey, there's this weird chemistry thing going on here that I'm not really sure if it's interesting or not, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I need you to move a little bit so this chemistry thing, so the pH goes back to normal. We get normal blood flow and oxygenation. But what if you can't move? Like, what if you're stuck there because of work? And then you hold this position over time. You see him getting that? Uh-oh, he throws up. That's unfortunate. I was on a roll too, man. Anyway, static positions are no different than anything else, right? There are consequences that are associated with them, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we have a weakness problem. People make the assumption, it's like, oh, you have pain in an area so I need to pull on it with a stretch and then I need to strengthen something. And that's been, I don't know where this started, but that's sort of been this methodology that people have used in rehab for the stretch and strengthening crowd. And again, looking at it from a different perspective, it's like, okay, do you have full movement capabilities in that area? That's really where we need to go first and foremost, because if you have all those movement options, I have all the muscle positions that I need, I have normal blood flow, so I don't get all the secondary consequences of static positions, pressures, and tensions. Right? So a lot of pain that people are experiencing are merely associated with that. It doesn't mean they're damaged, it doesn't mean they have tissue changes, doesn't mean that they're broken. It just means that they have too much pressure and tension in one place and they can't alleviate that.

Everything has to follow suit. Everything has to follow suit. There is no internal rotation until you have to push down into the ground.

Right. So we have maybe four, maybe three. How many ground contacts do I have? There you go. There's the answer. That is the answer. Okay. So it turns into a singular ground contact. Okay. So the fluid volume fills in all the spaces. So just take the skeleton. This is why skeletons can't walk, okay? Because they don't have the capacity to flip-flop the fluid volumes to create the right shapes. I mean, there's other reasons why skeletons can't walk. Right? Clearly. But point being is you have to have the bag of water down there to create the right shape. So when they talk about the accommodated foot, I'm not disagreeing with that because what happens is the fluid is shifting into the middle propulsive shape, which does create an accommodation to the surface. And then there's that moment of maximal compression where it becomes one piece, one contact. Okay because I got to push into the ground under those circumstances. Otherwise, you get wobbly angles, right? If you got those people that are accused of ankle instability. Do you know what that means? I mean, yes, but... Okay, what representation is ankle instability?

They're already there.

Okay. And we can also use that contralateral load if we want to focus on training out of the cat position because it makes it harder.

OK, makes sense. So I was also thinking about this in the context of exercises in which you're not moving. For example, a squat hold where you're sitting with your elbows there. Obviously, you are moving because there are multiple cycles of breath and other things happening. Within that, you might get a smaller overall magnitude but consistent yielding and overcoming that can facilitate an increase in movement options. But then I'm contrasting that with a reverse sled drag where you're in a similar position but walking backwards. It seems to me that the sled drag would create more yielding and improvement in space than something in which you are not moving forward or backwards. But I'm not sure if that's true because even if you're standing still within space, you are yielding every time you take a breath.

Yeah, I see that. I feel like I see that all the time.

But you will hear.

Yeah, it's what's back here, right?

That's easy. I'll come back with an ACL for you.

What would happen if you strategize and start adding in too much slow speed, strength training, like at peak force output, but it's slower, what would happen to the vertical jump?

Yeah. OK. That's super helpful.

OK. So if we look at how the muscles attached to the calcaneus attach more medial to the gastrocnemius, and so if we were playing a tug of war on the calcaneus, the soleus is winning. So that's an everted foot, right? And for her to run across the ground, she better be able to throw some inversion into the ground, right? Yep. How's she going to do it with a foot that does not invert at the subtalar joint? Well, she's going to go further up. Well, she's going to go distal in her foot, right? She's got it. Sorry, I was very excited for that. So she's got to apply inversion in front of where she would typically access it, right? So subtalar joint would traditionally pronate, unlocks the midfoot and allows the foot to move through midstance, right? She's not going to do that. And she's got to apply that inversion into the ground. So what you're going to get is you're going to get an increase in the anti-pronation for sure. That's how she's going to apply the downforce. But she's applying a downforce in any weight-bearing representation, isn't she?

Okay, cool.

So seriously, you can't tell. Those are the best haircuts when you can't tell. Like, well gets a haircut. Everybody knows.

And she's got the E orientation. So again, it's like you're just, she's going to have a lot of trouble capturing any relative hip IR. But again, it's like that becomes the problem because what we want, with the single leg contact out in front of her, is the energy to come up the extremity and towards the middle of the pelvis, not the lateral aspect of the pelvis.

Yes.

That's a brilliant answer. Right? In what direction, in what direction do those forces go? Actually, it's going to be energy. It's not really the force per se. It's going to be the energy that is translated. And we can speak generically. It's the shape that determines what happens in regards to a movement outcome. And so what we need is we need a way to dampen, produce, direct the energies. Do you have Kappanji?

I want the knee to go back into ER for me, will you? And so again, I think you're like I said, your intention to affect the knee, I have no qualms with that whatsoever. I just think you can make the mobilization a little better by making sure that you have the top down representation and bottom up representations. So the knee doesn't have to make a bad decision because knees are dumb. Arguably the dumbest joint in your body. Good morning. Happy Wednesday. I have neural coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right. Well, today is Wednesday. That means tomorrow's Thursday. That means, as usual, 6 a.m. Coffee and Coaches Conference call tomorrow morning. Link will be on my professional Facebook page. Please join us, great Q and A, great people. Just grab a coffee and start off your day with some education. Speaking of the Coffee and Coaches conference call from last week, we got on this kick about knees and stuff. We were talking about knee mobilizations posted that yesterday. This is a continuation of some of that discussion. There are folks on the call that are obviously personal trainers, strength conditioning coaches that don't do hands-on manual therapies. And so there are situations where they may be trying to recapture tibiofemoral IR as we do in clinic, they have to use different approaches. And so this is that discussion to a degree. So Manuel is a weightlifting coach. Dale is a powerlifting coach. And so both of them have similar scenarios. And we showed how they can use CDTAM and string curl to capture some of this relative motion at the knee. We also have to understand, though, that there are limitations in what can be recaptured into the circumstances, we discuss that as to how they may go about reestablishing a normal tibial femoral IR. For instance, we have to have that as we're descending into a squat. And so many times people with knee pain don't have that capacity. And so hopefully this video will lead you in a favorable direction to help remedy your situation. So thank you, Dale and Manuel. Everybody have an outstanding Wednesday. I'll see you tomorrow 6 a.m. Coffee and Coaches Conference call.

Oh, you really need to get out more. You should probably do something else with your time, and it's more valuable.

That's OK. No. So think about the conical shape of the ribcage. Yeah. OK. So I've got a conical shape of the ribcage that's going to be an influence there. So that means that the amount of pressure that you have at the top is you have the downward bias. So let's just say that you could flip somebody perfectly upside down. That would be like the ultimate solution, right? Because we'd be able to take advantage of gravity and promote the fill, if you will, from the top down. Understanding that the top is now the bottom. That would be the ideal situation. Very difficult to pull off in most training environments. Not impossible, but certainly difficult. So then the next best thing would be to have some form of supported inversion where I would have pelvis higher than shoulders. The only problem you're running into that is that if I'm supporting through the upper extremity, then I have to make sure that I have the upper extremities in a position that they have access to via ER space, superposition of IR. And so this tends to be some of the prone activities that do work, okay? But let me offer you this. Take that person, take a pylon, take an orange construction cone. You know what I'm talking about? Like the pylons that are out on the street. Knock it over, okay? So that's laying on its side. Is the top of the cone lower than the bottom of the cone by the angle.

And it's right hip though, but he feels it.

Okay. So you feel that, right? Yeah. That feeds back into the nervous system. You're breathing as you do this. We're using diaphragmatic breathing. We're trying to create this influence of diaphragmatic breathing through the system. Are you working hard against gravity?

Yeah. It's no different than any other activity in regards to, okay, I'm going to perform this. We're going to observe. We're going to see what happens. We're going to measure however we do that and make the comparison. And then we continue the process.

You ever see somebody squat down and they look really, really good. And then you tell them to push into the ground and their butt shifts back and then they go up.

Think about the opposite extreme.

So can I ask you a test question? Under most circumstances, what would you lead with? Would you lead with the reverse hyper? Would you lead with the back extension?

But technically speaking, if I'm pushing the right side against the left side that's going this way, what is my resultant direction? Forward.

Because the femur, the distal femur is more an IR and the tibia is more an ER.

Yeah. Okay. So let's take your example of putting something between the elbows. How do you know when that fails?